A transducer is a device that converts one form of energy to another. A common example of the application of a transducer device is a control knob of a home appliance such as a washing machine which may be operable by a user to select a particular wash setting. By turning the control knob, the physical positions of the control knob are converted into electrical signals by a potentiometer or step resistors of the transducer which represent the different positions of the control knob and hence the different selected settings.
In order to provide the user with the flexibility to select a useful range of different operational settings of the home appliance, multiple control knobs are generally mounted on to the home appliance to allow the user to select each different type of operational setting (e.g. wash time, wash temperature, fabric type, drying time etc). However, this is problematic as home appliances have finite space upon which to mount multiple control knobs.